Hi

Im doing a rogue-like dungeon game with the player managing a squad of heroes (similar to Darkest dungeon or Legend of grimrock).

The setting is classic medieval-fantasy.

How can I differentiate damage and weapons to make it more tactical? I got some basic ideas already:

clubs/maces - lower damage but high bonus vs undead

spears/arrows - higher bleed but much lower dmg vs undead

dmg is either physical or magical - some monsters have resistance to either

weapons good against slow/fast enemies?

maybe spear and bows bonus vs beasts?

weapons that are harder to block with shield?

anti-armour dmg - ignore "armoured" trait that some monsters have (which weapons would this be except maybe crossbow?

This is not much as you see. Need more ideas! (and criticism for the ones listed!)

I want to encourage the player to balance the group of heroes and/or plan for known missions ahead (e.g. if next "map" is a crypt-style dungeon equip heroes accordingly with anti-undead stuff).

Thank you!

Do you have attack speed? If not, maybe have a weapon that can hit multiple times. A dagger gets to attack twice per turn, but each attack does less, and the opponent gets to use damage reduction (if you use damage reduction) on each attack. That kind of covers the case of having a weapon that makes it easier to hit things, as the dagger gets two chances to hit, and on a target with low armor and/or hit points, that might be preferable.

Maybe spears can always attack first in a round, due to range. (Ye olde First Strike from Magic the gathering.)

PS. I've always hated the environment/creature based buff/debuff system. If you have an archer character who has specialized in bows, it's not much fun to suddenly have a useless character, because you're encountering skeletons. This can be mitigated a little if it's more of a large roster style game like XCom.

You've given a good survey of enemy bonuses: either because of type or armor or speed one weapon is better than another for a given foe. The player is rewarded for either frequent weapon swaps or for knowing what's coming next. Another variant is a weapon that attacks multiple foes for less damage (better in groups, worse against individuals)

You can also make situationally advantageous weapons: two handed axe does more damage but prevents the use of a shield, spear allows attacking from behind allies, bow is advantageous at range but less useful once the enemy closes.

You can make weapons appropriate for different stat mixes: dagger gets a big bonus from dexterity while warhammer gets it from strength. Each character then has affinity for certain weapons (that you might occasionally have to ignore to give them the best piece of loot or the weapon most appropriate for the next enemy)

You can tie weapons to special skills. So a sword can be used to disarm and a dagger can backstab and a mace can stun.

You can design syngeries between weapons. A torch does fire damage and a vial of oil inflects vulnerability to fire. The Iron Cudgel is unwieldy and hard to hit with, but the net greatly reduces enemy dodging.

Weapons can attack different aspects of the enemy. A club is more likely to knock the enemy unconscious ending the battle outright. A dagger is less likely to outright end the battle, but the wounds sap the enemy of his combat ability. A weapon of draining steals their mp.

You could have environmental effects, where a dagger works better in a narrow tunnel, or where reach is explicitly a factor.

Weapons can require varying levels of skill (everyone can grab a pitchfork and point it at the enemy, a long bow requires mastery)

One element for attacks (yo r chosen fighting game mechanics) is whether Area Attacks (sometimes other types) are allowed to do collateral damage against your own side (thus being a limitation upon their use).

Thanks!

What is your take in critical damage?

I now have the same chance regardless of weapon, but one thing one could do is make some weapon types have lower base damage but higher % of crit. (Crit damage is set to a fixed normal damage x CRIT_DMG_MOD).

But what weapons would make sense to behave like that? And is it a useful behavior for a game? ( I know xcom 1 had higher crit % for shotguns).

D&D 3.X had both higher/lower chances of critical hits, and opened up the critical damage modifier.

Scimitars had a great chance of critical hitting, but only a 2x multiplier.

Scythes had a low chance of critical hitting, but a 4x multiplier.

And of course certain skills/feats would increase critical chances, and I can't recall if there was one that increased the critical modifier.

Though I could see it argued that your basically forcing your player to calculate DPS (or damage per Turn in your case)

clubs/maces - lower damage but high bonus vs undead
spears/arrows - higher bleed but much lower dmg vs undead

Note: in pen and paper RPGs both of those properties are creature properties.

That is, the weapon by itself inflicts the same damage, the creature absorbs it differently.

There are some ways to do this, a simple tag system might work.

There are of course special weapons which have special bonuses. They could also be common but they are not the norm.

Piercing is an interesting example. I recall two different methods:

1. armor absorbs damage
2. armor avoids getting hit

In my experience, in the former case piercing appears considerably powerful. In the latter there's often so such a thing, with piercing weapons having an higher base damage but the extra damage is lower.

Here are some weapon variables I am using-

Lower chance to hit but higher damage

Higher chance to hit but lower damage

Lower chance to critical hit but higher damage

Higher chance to critical hit but lower damage

Higher damage but chance to inflict a little damage to yourself

Lower damage but chance to heal a little damage to yourself

One tip: take several steps back :-)

All your attributes for "interesting" combat will only hide the fundamental game mechanism and you will have a really hard time to pin your combat system down. I would sugguest to start really simple:

1. Start out with a RPS approach (Rock-Paper-Scissor), don't try to re-invent the wheel if you don't have much experiences with balancing out tactical combat. Literally 99% of all games, RTS, FPS, RPGs have a RPS installed.

2. There are litterally 1000 ways to define a RPS: skills ? dmg type ? armor/weapon type ? etc. This will have the most impact on your game mechanism and eventually weapon/skill design.

3. An boring combat system (or more general game mechanism) is often the result of a flawed games mechanism. Countering this by adding more features is the wrong way, this will not make your game mechanism more interesting, only more complex. You need to make the core game-mechanism interesting first and that with as few elements as possible.

4. Once you have pinned down your core combat mechanism, test it out, prototype, get it right.

5. Now you can start to design your items around your core combat mechanism. Do you really need maces and hammer when they are mechanically the same ? Why should you add axes if your best items will always be swords ?

6. Now, balance this again, get it right.

7. Now and only now you should consider to add more details to fine-tune the combat mechanism. But be really careful. Why do you want to add critical dmg ?


Note:
It is luring to take all the interesting attributes of some intersting games, espcially RPGs. But these games have found this attributes after designing and balancing them for a long time. Just putting together a set of attribute will not work, you will end with a overly complex mechanism, lot of redundant stuff and irrelevant stuff , aka bad design.

Good idea!

I guess my combat is not very RPS. Its more like wow-raiding (or most MMORPG) but you assemble a group of heroes (3-6 depending on how far in the campaign you are) that you put together for each "run"/dungeon. Heroes has 3 main roles which are very wow-like:

1. Tank

2. Damage

3. Support/buffs/debuffs/Healing

A hero type (there is 12 right now) is roughly described by:

- has different proficiencies in these 3 roles (some hybrids but mostly more one main role).

- is either useful in front OR back row. (units are placed in a grid and face enemies on a grid and take turns acting)

- can use some weapons BUT not other

- has 4 abilities (these go together with the role the hero has).

Hero power (damage/health/healing) is very dependent upon items. Items loose condition when used and cannot be repaired. You need to find new items!

Most of this may be fairly traditional for a game but I dont mind:)

However, because of the nature of the game, roles are not as extreme as wow (you CAN make it even if a tank dies, but it will not be optimal in most cases)